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A Boy Finds His Love for Theater

Among the cliques in middle school, the theater nerds — kids who can recite Stephen Sondheim lyrics by heart and name the Broadway actresses who played Dolly Levi in order — are hardly on easy street. Tim Federle found that in 1994 when a suburban Pittsburgh classmate teased him about wearing tights in a local production of “Cats.” Mortified, 13-year-old Tim dropped out of the musical, citing only “personal reasons.”

Mr. Federle went on to become a dancer in Broadway musicals like “The Little Mermaid” and the Bernadette Peters revival of “Gypsy,” but he never shook the memory of losing his nerve. So when he began mulling his next career move as he turned 30, facing a juncture forced on many dancers as they age, he returned to an early love — writing — to tell a story that would have bucked up his younger self.

His new children’s novel, published this month by Simon & Schuster as part of a two-book deal, is “Better Nate Than Ever,” a twinkling adventure tale for the musical theater set. Like Mr. Federle back in the day, Nate Foster is also 13 and theater-obsessed, wide-eyed and exclamatory, and with an underdeveloped build that inspires his choice of audition songs, “Bigger Isn’t Better” from “Barnum.”

Yet Nate is also gutsier than most kids (even if he doesn’t realize it), leading him to sneak off to New York and try out for a Broadway-bound show, “E. T.: The Musical.” Mishaps ensue and a few tears are shed, but ultimately it’s a coming-of-age tale with an It Gets Better message: Embrace your idiosyncrasy rather than sacrifice it to bullies.

“The thing that can get you picked on in one town is the same thing that can get you paid money in another town, with little to no adjustment,” said Mr. Federle, sitting in his cozy studio on the Upper West Side that he bought in 2005 out of certainty that the musical he was then in, “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang,” would run forever. (It closed in nine months.)

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Tim Federle has written a children's novel about the theater.Credit
Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times

An enviable acquisition from a major New York publisher is an unusual development in the life of a Broadway baby, mostly confined to Tony Award-winning divas like Carol Channing, Patti LuPone, and Kristin Chenoweth, whose memoirs are manna for show queens. And many more hoofers tend to reinvent themselves as choreographers, as Mr. Federle has also done.

But “Nate” has proved to be a popular-enough seller, at the annual Junior Theater Festival and at library and school conferences this winter, that Simon & Schuster just had a third printing — for a total of 20,000 copies (sizable for a tween book) — and will release a sequel, “Five, Six, Seven, Nate!” a year from now.

Mr. Federle, 32, finished “Nate” in a month, writing a chapter each morning and e-mailing it to a friend who would just reply, “Keep going.” He is benefiting from connections within the theater world, like the ticketing agency Broadway.com’s sending out 10,000 fliers for the book to its customers.

Mr. Federle’s chief patron in the Broadway industry is Thomas Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatrical Productions, who became a friend during the run of “Disney’s The Little Mermaid” after noticing his creativity playing a sea gull and a catfish, among other ensemble roles.

“In one crazy chef number Tim had one line — ‘curried bass’ — and he invented this gag of kissing the bass that cracked me up,” said Mr. Schumacher, who helped Mr. Federle find a literary agent and hosted a book party last month. “He just kept coming up with ideas that were deeply, deeply inventive and that fit cleverly with the tone of the scene.”

Exuberant wordplay is Mr. Federle’s signature: instead of cursing, for instance, Nate shouts out the titles of Broadway flops — “Holy ‘Dance of the Vampires’!” and “ ‘Moose Murders’ it all to tarnation!”

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Mr. Federle, lower right, with other members of the cast of "Babes in Arms" in East Haddam, Conn., in 2002.Credit
Diane Sobolewski

Mr. Federle, it seems, was born quipping. When a teacher once asked where he was supposed to be as he wandered the halls of his school in Upper St. Clair, Pa., he replied, “Broadway!” Years later, at his audition for “Chitty,” when asked if he’d be willing to zip up the actress Jan Maxwell during a quick costume change, he recalled saying: “Do I mind? To me that’s the asset of the gig!”

“I was probably the only kid who knew every word to ‘Merrily We Roll Along’ before I knew the state capitals,” Mr. Federle said of that 1981 musical by Mr. Sondheim.

Mr. Federle was also around Nate’s age when he started to notice an attraction to boys, and the novel has this thread, too. But it is gently woven: Nate’s only love interest is “Wicked” — “like, half the reason for New York to even exist” — and he reacts to two boys kissing with childlike awe. (“Nobody punches them.”)

David Gale, the Simon & Schuster executive who bought the “Nate” books, said a sales agent at the company asked whether the kiss were needed and whether it would limit sales. But Mr. Gale noted that it was key to the book.

“Nate’s sense of wonder is refreshing and moving, and it’s rare to find a book where teenage sexuality is treated with a light touch,” Mr. Gale said.

Which was exactly Mr. Federle’s goal. He has written for The Huffington Post and elsewhere about the need for young characters “who just happen to be gay” — who are still curious and excited about the world, rather than tortured by it.

“It’s important for kids to know that who you are and who you fall in love with shouldn’t be as important as your dreams,” said Mr. Federle, who now lives with his boyfriend in his “ ‘Chitty’ money” apartment. “I think your dreams should be bigger than your crushes.”

A version of this article appears in print on February 23, 2013, on page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: A Boy Finds His Love For Theater. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe